What was the title of Diane di Prima’s first poetry collection, published in 1958?

Diane di Prima’s first poetry collection, published in 1958, was This Kind of Bird Flies Backward.

The collection established di Prima as an important woman poet associated with the Beat milieu. It appeared during a period when she was active in New York’s literary and theatrical communities, before she later became closely linked with San Francisco’s countercultural arts scene.

Di Prima’s writing often combined personal experience, political awareness, sexuality, spirituality, and formal experimentation. Her career also included playwriting, teaching, editing, and small-press publishing. She co-founded the Poets Press with Amiri Baraka, then known as LeRoi Jones.

Readers sometimes mistake Dinners and Nightmares for her debut because it is an especially well-known early collection. That book was published later, in 1961. This Kind of Bird Flies Backward is the title associated with her first poetry collection.